


A Familiar Creak in Your Floorboards

by levendis



Series: Prompt Fics [8]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Advanced Masturbation Techniques, Angst, Asexuality, F/F, F/M, Other, Queerplatonic Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-06
Updated: 2015-05-06
Packaged: 2018-03-29 08:22:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3889282
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/levendis/pseuds/levendis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The thing about this is it isn’t quite what she expected.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Familiar Creak in Your Floorboards

**Author's Note:**

> For Anonymous, who prompted: Clara x the TARDIS

The thing about this is it isn’t quite what she expected. And she’s fine with that, mostly. It is what it is and it’s more than it was, more than anything else she’s had in its own strange way. She loves the Doctor and he loves her and that’s good enough. What else could she even ask for?

She’s self-sufficient, she’s never really needed a man to take care of her. She’s got a good imagination and a quality vibrator and, when she gets tired of her own thoughts, a carefully-curated bookmark folder in her web browser. And when she gets tired of that, the TARDIS comes to her, easing into her head and over her body, an embrace of a sort.

The ship has an affection for her fragile, wayward sons and daughters. The ship has an affection for her, Clara knows. She lies awake at night in bed, sheets twisted around her, the loneliness thick in her throat. Toes curling, breath hitching, the ghost of a hand, the ghosts of a thousand hands, pressing down on her. A mechanical release. Her needs are taken care of. A bath pulled for her afterwards, water at a precise temperature.

And it’s nice and it’s good and it’s fine, mostly. But sometimes, sometimes -

To put it crassly, sometimes she just wants to be fucked.

The Doctor gets it, she thinks. The Doctor is slightly disappointed in himself, at the fact that he is unable to provide this for her. Not so much that it’s a failing or an error on his part, only just that they don’t fit together here as they do in other things. This is a place where they don’t quite line up.

She’d tried kissing him, once. Not a peck or a brush, not with friendly tenderness but with raw need. She’d put her tongue in his mouth and her hand on his waist, given him everything that she had left of herself to give, everything she hadn’t already given him. And she’d pulled back, and looked at him, and he’d looked back with an almost comical grab-bag of emotions. Sadness and confusion and apprehension and a bleak, black humor. Came out nearly as a smile. And her heart, her heart had sunk right down to the soles of her feet.

But he loves her, and she loves him, and so what if it’s not what she’d expected. He is an alien, after all. Whatever has ever existed between them, it’s never been normal. It is what it is.

 

He’s trying to fix it - he always wants to fix things, always wants to solve the problem. Like he could make a gadget that would make her happy, if only he had the right parts.

Tilting at windmills with DIY science projects, and that’s part of his charm.

“There’s a physical interface,” he says, doing that awkward not-saying-but-totally-saying thing, fiddling with buttons that don’t need fiddling with. “The TARDIS can present as a person, or whatever. Holographic projection, drawn from an enormous library. If you ever want to - play racquetball, or charades, or anything else I’m not much good at.”

“I’m alright, you know. With not - playing racquetball. Racquetball is nice, but it’s okay if you’re not. Not interested, in playing. There’s plenty of other sports. Football, you know. Snooker.” She curls her hands into fists by her sides. She hates these conversations, the ones where they both pretend they’re not talking about what it is they’re talking about.

And she wonders why they’re still so bad at communicating with each other. Why they’re still so careful and scared. She smiles falsely, and he grins nervously back, and then he bustles off to do something, somewhere, some conduit or other that doesn’t really require tending to.

 

She tells herself she doesn’t need it, isn’t interested, wouldn’t want anything other than what she can give herself. But that night, or whatever passes for night here, she finds herself lying awake in bed. Shoulders tense, everything tense, a palpable frustration building.

She sits up, and she massages her temples, and she figures: why not? What’s the harm?

“I heard you can do people,” she says. “Manifest me a person.”

The ship gives her _him_ , at first. Because that’s what she wants, right? It is and it’s not - she might occasionally think about him like that, might think about unpeeling all those layers and finding whatever lay beneath, taking him like she’d take a human man. But whatever desire she has for him has long since been subsumed by a knowledge of what this is, and what it isn’t, and an acceptance of those things.

And it’s not right. It isn’t. He wouldn’t hold it against her, but she’d hold it against herself.

So she closes her eyes and she thinks real hard and when she’s opened her eyes again, another image is being presented to her. A man, no one she’s met, clean-cut and square-jawed, grinning roguishly, handsome but not quite what she’s looking for, not now.

“Try again,” she says, with more confidence than she feels.

The hologram flickers: younger, now, big-nosed, cute in a goofy way, flannel shirt and trainers. And she thinks maybe this would be an alright boy to take out for a drink but it’s still not what she wants. Whatever it is that she wants.

“Nope,” she says. “What else you got?”

The hologram flickering, and flickering, a series of images buzzing in and out, a litany of the travelers that had been here before her, men and women, humans mostly. The TARDIS, she feels, is growing antsy. Surely one of these will work. Surely she’s not so picky she’ll pass over everyone.

She stops the slideshow finally for reasons she’s not entirely sure of. A woman, older, blonde, small but imposing. Straight-backed, haughty, regal and resplendent in cream and gold robes. Not conventionally attractive but something, something is dragging Clara in. Maybe the look in her eyes, maybe the angle of her jaw, maybe the sense of warmth the TARDIS is affording her. The knowledge that this was someone the Doctor once loved, a second-hand attraction. Maybe something else altogether. Who knows.

“This one’s name is Romana,” the hologram says. There’s a weight, an ache to the voice. “Romanadvoratrelundar, of the house of Heartshaven. The last true president of Gallifrey. Do you like her?”

“Not sure,” Clara says, circling around the projection. Taking in details: the efficient haircut, the hints of sharp hipbones beneath the robes, the dark circles under her eyes. “Talk to me like she would.”

“Fine,” the projection says. “So. Here we are. Do you want me or not? I don’t have all day.”

 _Romana_ , she thinks, and wills the facts of this out of her head, tries to forget she’s auditioning the personae of a sentient time capsule for the role of temporary sexual partner. Tries to forget that this isn’t real.

“Tell me about Gallifrey,” she whispers, leaning in.

 

It is what it is, which is fucking a hologram. Projected images and artificial haptic feedback, the algorithms of desire. Raised pulses, quickened breath. A kiss, open-mouthed, trailing down her neck to collarbone, breasts, belly. Teeth, or the illusion of teeth. A hand between her legs.

Tired eyes and sweat pooling, nightdress and ceremonial robes rucked up around their respective thighs. She watches, she’s never been a closed-eyes-and-lights-off sort of woman; she watches the face of the illusion writhing above her. The eyelash flutter, the choked-back moan, the flush rising bright pink on pallid cheeks. Bit lip and throbbing veins. The sense of a mask slipping, a long-held secret being told. Bones and skin, or the memory of bones and skin, and beneath that. Beneath that the ship. Time and relative dimensions compressed to a single body, reaching out with borrowed hands. The ghost of the Doctor’s old lover pressing down on her.

She comes with her teeth clenched tight and holographic fingers inside her. Shuddering and falling apart around nothing at all. The thing that looks like Romana follows suit, with the smallest gasp. The echo of centuries in her eyes, and something else. A kindness, maybe.

And Clara feels alright, she feels fine. Sated, at least. The projection smiles, and flickers, and then vanishes. She hears a bath being drawn. After a moment spent staring at the wall, and catching her breath, and untangling herself from the sheets, she gets up, and follows the sounds of water at a precise temperature hitting porcelain.


End file.
